London Restaurants

Sichuan food

Chinese food in Britain has lurched along since the 1950s; dishes like sweet and sour pork and chow mein may be familiar favourites on the high street, but they’d never win prizes for authenticity. More recently, we’ve seen some more specific regional Chinese cuisines making their mark and the most successful of these is from Sichuan.

The first thing to note about Sichuan food is that it often includes implausible amounts of fiery chillies. And if the chillies don’t get you, the Sichuan pepper certainly will. The pepper is actually a small flower bud which has a stinging, anaesthetic effect.

Fun dishes include fish poached in chilli oil, which comes in a deep bowl, with a thick layer of dried chillies floating on top of it. The ‘fire-exploded’ kidney flowers are also good, and there’s the numbing hot-dried beef (Sichuan pepper to the fore again). You could dodge all the hot stuff and still have a good meal, but anyone who likes chilli heat would consider that a crying shame. Sichuan cuisine is cropping up in more and more restaurants; start with Barshu in Soho and go from there.